The Baptist Church
The Baptist Church was the other major denomination favoured by the African Canadian community. In Upper Canada, black participation in the Baptist Church had begun in earnest with William Wilks, who in 1818 escaped from Virginia to Amherstburg. He preached to other refugees, acting as an unofficial pastor until he was ordained a Baptist minister in 1821. Through the 1820s and 1830s, Washington Christian, a refugee from New York, formed black Baptist congregations in Toronto, Hamilton, St. Catharines and Niagara Falls.

In 1841, African Canadians joined with fellow African Americans in Detroit to form the Amherstburg Regular Missionary Baptist Association. The association was a coordinated effort to supply needed religious and practical assistance to fugitives in the face of indifference and sometimes hostility expressed by white Baptists in Canada. It also spoke out strongly for the abolition of slavery and broke with all pro-slavery Baptist churches. The Sandwich First Baptist Church in present-day Windsor was a member of the Amherstburg Regular Missionary Baptist Association, and has been designated a national historic site.

Like the Methodists, Baptist preachers travelled the sparsely settled countryside, bringing both religious and social comfort to isolated homesteaders. The women of the congregation often organized philanthropic organizations such as the Baptist Women's Home Missionary Society to assist the newly arrived or the needy. The church building

itself provided a venue where the local community could come together to celebrate, to offer mutual support and to share experiences as well as views on religion, politics and events of the day.

From an early date, a major preoccupation of the churches was the education of refugee children. Where schools were lacking, or where existing schools barred attendance by black children, churches sometimes organized their own. By 1852, the AME Church had established five schools accommodating about 250 students. Sunday Schools often provided more than just religious instruction, also augmenting otherwise inadequate educational facilities. A report of BME Sabbath schools in 1858 recorded approximately 900 students in attendance, with 12 libraries making available over 2,000 books.

Remarkably, many of the early church buildings established by African Canadian congregations have survived to the present. This can be attributed, in part, to the importance of these institutions to their communities. In addition, most are found in rural areas or small communities, where the absence of redevelopment pressure has made these modest structures less vulnerable than their sister churches in larger centres such as Toronto. There, almost all the early African Canadian churches have disappeared, succumbing to fire, to the need for larger buildings to accommodate growing congregations or to redevelopment pressure.